Rose & Thorn Read online

  No, Griff wanted to answer.

  He was forestalled by a resounding crash, as the lift docked at the top of the cliff. An iron bell rang. Immediately, workers sprang into action, opening the lift’s gate and starting to unload the carts piled with coal.

  “We’ll go down on this trip,” Quirk told her. “Hurry, now.” With a nod, Rose started for the lift. The coal had already been cleared, and the workers were loading the lift with crates.

  “Wait,” Griff protested. Their orders were not to let her leave the City.

  “Now then, junior,” Quirk started, and then he frowned and looked past Griff, at the road behind him. “Is that . . . ?”

  Griff turned to see what he was worried about. The road was busy with carts and a rumbling wagon, but he didn’t see anything unusual. When he turned back, two workers holding an immense crate moved between him and the lift. Griff stepped aside to go around them, when a man with very broad shoulders, wearing a peaked cap that shaded his face, blocked his way with a barrel that he was carrying. There was a harsh clanging sound—the lift bell. “Junior!” he heard Quirk call.

  “Let me pass,” Griff ordered, reaching for the knife sheathed at his back. The man holding the barrel raised his chin to give him a baleful stare and slowly shifted aside. Griff paused—did he know the man? He seemed familiar, somehow. But his way to the lift was clear. Shoving past a lingering group of workers, he reached the gate. The lift had already started its rattling descent; the heads of its passengers were just below the level of the cliff top.

  Griff stepped onto the lowest rung of the gate, intending to climb over and jump down to the lift, to join them.

  “Hold there, junior!” he heard Quirk shout from the lift platform. “Wait for us to come back up.”

  Griff gripped the gate, staring down at them as they descended lower. Quirk lifted a hand, as if to say stop. Rose, however, smiled sunnily up at him. She was probably glad to be rid of him.

  He couldn’t blame her, really.

  CHAPTER

  10

  QUIRK HAD WARNED ME THAT IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO lose Griff. He’d caught up with us before we’d left the citadel, and he’d spotted the Breakers that Quirk had said would be keeping an eye on us as we approached the warehouse district. He was quiet as he walked behind us, but I was aware of him back there, poised and competent, and very alert.

  The night before he’d told me that the Lord Protector thought I was a servant of Story. But Griff hadn’t said if he himself believed it.

  Well, he must. He was the son of the Lord Protector, after all.

  I wanted to be sure that he was wrong about it, but I couldn’t be, not quite. What if Griff was right—what if my own stories didn’t tell the true story? The question filled my thoughts. After a night of pondering it as my burned arm throbbed with pain, I felt less certain of who I was, what I was. There was the problem of Shoe, and whether he had been my guard or not. It didn’t make me love him any less, but I did wonder. Then there was the curse, and the spindle, and the beauty, and the fact that the Forest had sent me here—

  —or maybe it hadn’t. Maybe Story had drawn me to the City so it could use me as its catalyst or servant. That was a thought too awful to contemplate. If it had, then Griff was right, and I really was marked by Story and dangerous, too.

  As the lift slowly jerked its way down the cliff face, I looked up at Griff, who seemed wonderfully frustrated as he stood at the railing, watching us descend. The Breakers’ plan to get us away had worked perfectly. Quirk and I would have time to meet with them down below at the lakeside, before going back up to the City.

  Griff looked desolate, too. One still, gray figure amid the busy activity at the cliff top. I had a feeling that he would stand there without moving until we came back again. Just doing his duty, I reminded myself.

  Beside me, Quirk reached up to nudge my arm. The noise of the lift made it impossible to talk, but he gave me an encouraging, gap-toothed grin.

  At last the lift thumped to a stop at the bottom of the cliff, at a dank dock wet with the spray from the waterfall; other docks reached like long fingers into the lake. Some were busy with workers and crowded with supplies waiting to be ferried out to the barges; others seemed abandoned.

  As I stepped onto the slippery planks of the dock, Quirk turned to the lift driver, a gaunt man who was busy squirting oil from a can into a complex set of gears that stuck out the side of the platform.

  “We need you to hold the lift,” Quirk ordered. We couldn’t have it going back up with a load, and bringing Griff down with it.

  “What?” asked the driver, straightening. Oil dripped from the gears he’d been working on and into the lake. The water’s surface was slick with oil, and dotted with trash; here and there bobbed a dead fish, adding to the stink in the air.

  It seemed as if the City killed everything it touched.

  Or the City itself was dying.

  “We need ten minutes,” Quirk said to the lift driver.

  “What did you say, Watcher?” he said, and bent closer to Quirk with his hand cupped around his ear. He must be nearly deaf from running the noisy lift.

  “Ten minutes,” repeated Quirk, and held up ten stubby fingers.

  The driver nodded, understanding.

  “Listen, Rose,” Quirk said as he hurried me along a dock. “Try to keep quiet, if you can.” I nodded, understanding. With Griff’s vigilance, Quirk hadn’t had time to tell me much about the leaders of the Breakers, and we didn’t have enough time for this meeting, either. We reached a shed that stood on stilts planted in the oily water of the lake.

  At the shed’s door we were met by a young woman only a few years older than I was, who had a nasty-looking bruise on her jaw. Her brown hair was cut into a short bristle; she had a wide mouth set in a scowl, and incongruously lovely brown eyes framed by long lashes. She wore trousers, a patched shirt, worn boots, and a leather coat down to her knees. She had a sword, too, in a scabbard at her hip. She blinked when she saw my face, then curled her lip in a sneer. “We’ve been waiting.”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Quirk answered with a grin. “I’m Quirk. But you, sweetheart, can call me Quirk. It seems my partner gave you a fine memory of your encounter in the alley the other night.”

  The young woman rubbed the bruise on her chin. “And I marked him too, didn’t I?” she said, frowning down at him. “Do I dare hope that his wound was much more serious than it appeared to be?”

  “So bloodthirsty,” Quirk chided, and his grin widened. “Oh, and I’d like you to meet the Anvil here”—he flexed one arm—“and the Hammer,” and he flexed the other.

  She stared. “You’ve named your muscles.”

  He gave her a falsely innocent blink. “Of course, sweetheart. Haven’t you?”

  She gave a disgusted snort and stepped aside so we could go in.

  “Hello,” I said, trying to be friendly, but she turned the scowl on me, so I ducked my head and hurried past.

  The shed was full of rusted metal and broken boards and moldy pieces of canvas; its windows were shuttered. The young woman stepped past us to sit on a barrel. Next to her, close enough so their knees were touching, sat an old woman with thin gray hair scraped into a bun. A third person, a bigger woman, leaned against a wall by the door, arms folded; as we entered, she squeezed past us to leave the shed. Even with her gone, it was four too many for the shed to hold comfortably.

  The young woman with the bruised chin shifted aside to give the older woman more room. “Is Bouchet with you?” she asked.

  Quirk shook his head. “He had to stay behind to deal with the other Watcher. Who, I might add, is recovering well from the scratch you gave him.”

  Griff, he meant. Bouchet must have been the big man with the barrel who had blocked Griff’s way to the lift.

  The gray-haired woman nodded and got stiffly to her feet. She was wearing a beautifully stitched knee-length coat made of dark-green wool, with an embroidered belt and collar
. “That’s fine.” She pointed at the young woman. “This is Timothy. Sent from outside to help us.”

  Timothy was an odd name for a girl, I thought. “To help you do what?” I asked.

  Ignoring my question, the old woman squinted, examining me. “So this is the girl.”

  “It is,” confirmed Quirk.

  “You’re certain?” the woman asked.

  “Absolutely,” Quirk answered.

  I opened my mouth to ask her name, but Quirk caught my eye and gave a little shake of his head.

  “Mm.” The old woman leaned closer, and I held myself still as she reached out with thin fingers to brush aside a tendril of hair that hung in my eyes. “Yes, quite lovely, Quirk, as you said,” she murmured. Timothy gave another disgusted snort. The old woman took my hand and turned it over to see the bandage on my wrist. “Marked,” she noted. “And cursed.”

  She hadn’t yet spoken to me, I realized, only about me.

  The old woman seated herself again on her barrel and stared musingly. “I don’t know, Quirk. The Forest has never done anything like this before; it shouldn’t have brought her here in the first place.”

  “Maybe the Forest didn’t have any choice,” Timothy put in, her voice rough.

  The old woman nodded. “Ah, then Story drew her here. Perhaps we should just let the Lord Protector deal with her; that is likely what the Forest intended.”

  “No,” Quirk said, and it sounded strangely like an order. But he wasn’t one of the Breakers, he’d said. I wasn’t sure why he’d decided to help me, but I suddenly liked him even more than I had before.

  The old woman frowned. “It will be difficult to get her out, given what she is.”

  I knew what the Lord Protector thought I was, and it seemed the Breakers thought so, too. Her words made me suddenly feel very small and a little frightened, caught up in things that I didn’t understand.

  “Don’t worry, lass,” Quirk said quickly, reaching up to pat my arm. “This is Precious.” He pointed with his chin at the old woman. “She is the leader of the Breakers. She was one of those who fought Story when it first took power in the City, and she knew the first Protector, Pen.”

  “Oh,” I said to her. “Then you must have known Shoe.”

  After a silent moment, she answered. “I did, yes, and I am sorry to hear that he is dead.” With a thin hand she stroked the embroidery on her coat collar. “Shoe knew better than any of us the power of Story. He had the scars to show for it, too.”

  Us, she’d said. “Shoe was one of you?” I asked. “He was a Breaker, even though the Penwitch was the Protector?”

  Precious frowned and glanced at Quirk. “Does she know nothing?”

  As an answer, Quirk gave a shrug.

  “Shoe told me stories every night,” I ventured. “And I loved him very much. That’s what I know.”

  Quirk nodded approvingly; I’d said the right thing. He lifted his chin and gave Precious a narrow stare. “Rose knows the kinds of stories that open up the world instead of closing our minds. The kinds of stories that Breakers tell.” As he spoke, his voice grew deeper with authority and certainty. “Rose will not willingly serve Story, even though Story drew her here and seeks to use her to rise to power again. As I see it, Precious, you have a choice. Rose must either escape from the City or die. You could let the Lord Protector have her. Or you can help her get away.”

  “That was a very fine speech,” Timothy said scornfully.

  Quirk gave her a gap-toothed grin. “It was, wasn’t it, sweetheart?”

  “Sweetheart again?” she sniped.

  “Always,” he answered, with mock seriousness.

  Behind me, the door opened, interrupting Timothy’s angry retort. The big woman who’d left before stuck her head in. “Jem can’t hold the lift any longer,” she said brusquely.

  “Very well,” Precious said with a nod. “Go on, Quirk. We’ll need a little time. You’ll be contacted soon.”

  Quirk patted my arm and turned to lead me out of the shed.

  “No,” I said, refusing to budge.

  “Move it,” Timothy said, and bumped my shoulder with hers as she brushed past me to the door.

  “No,” I repeated. “You haven’t decided yet. Are you going to help me, or not?”

  Precious frowned at Quirk, as if it was his fault that I had spoken. “We don’t have time for this.”

  Quirk glanced up at me. “It’s all right, Rose. Just wait outside for a moment, will you? I want to have a quick word with Precious, here.”

  After a worried moment I nodded and stepped into the bright day, glad to be out of the dark, stuffy shed, feeling a little shaky about confronting Precious, who had seemed very powerful. Timothy came with me. Facing me, she folded her arms, lowered her brows, and glared.

  In return, I gave her a tentative smile. She was one of the Breakers, so she was allied with Quirk. I had never had a friend before. Well, Quirk was a friend of a sort, but he was at least ten years older. I had to try to become friends with Timothy, even though it was clear that she disliked me. I still wasn’t sure why. “Timothy is a nice name,” I ventured.

  “Oh really,” she said with a sneer in her voice. “Do you really think so?”

  I nodded, and cast about for something else to talk about. “Oh, you’re from outside the City, Precious said. So am I.”

  “Oh my goodness,” she said with false sweetness. “We must have so much in common.”

  I gulped. This wasn’t working. “Yes,” I said shakily. “I suppose we do.”

  “Don’t even bother, Rose,” Timothy said roughly. “I know exactly what you are, and what you’re up to. So save your little smiles and all of that”—she pointed at my face, at the beauty—“for someone else.”

  Sudden tears arose in my eyes, and I looked down at the rough boards of the dock. Evidently Timothy and I were not going to be friends.

  From inside the shed came the low murmur of Quirk’s voice and Precious’s, talking. No, Quirk said loudly. She isn’t—and then Precious’s sharp voice cut him off.

  The big woman leaned over and knocked on the door, reminding them about the lift.

  In response, Quirk came out, scowling. Without a word to me, he stalked down the dock toward the lift.

  “Well, good-bye,” I said to Timothy as I hurried after Quirk.

  The lift driver beckoned as he saw us coming, and Quirk picked up his pace.

  “Quirk,” I asked, as I caught up to him. “They do want to help me, don’t they?”

  He muttered something that I didn’t catch.

  It was too much. I stopped in my tracks. I didn’t want to go back into the City—it was too dangerous.

  Quirk reacted instantly, turning to face me. “What is it, lass?”

  I glanced toward the docks, at the river, at the Forest beyond, looking for a way out. “They’re not going to help, are they?” I waved at the shed where we’d met the Breakers. “If I go back up there”—I pointed at the top of the cliff—“the Lord Protector will toss me into the citadel prison. I should get away now, while I can.”

  “The Forest won’t let you in, Rose, and the Watchers would catch you before you got a mile down the river.”

  Desperation welled up in me. “What am I going to do?”

  “The Breakers will help,” he assured me. “Just be patient.”

  From the end of the dock came a yell—the lift was waiting.

  “Come on, lass,” Quirk said. “Trust me, all right?”

  A moment more of hesitation, and I nodded.

  After hurrying from the dock, we stepped onto the lift, which was crowded with coal carts; the driver slammed the gate closed, rang the bell, and threw the lever to start the machinery. Gears clashed; the lift groaned and started crawling up the cliff.

  Quirk tugged on my arm, and I bent so he could shout into my ear. “Don’t worry, Rose,” he said. “It’ll be all right. I’ll make sure of that.”

  AS THE LIFT made its rattling way down
the cliff face, Griff remembered where he’d seen the big man with the barrel.

  “Bouchet,” he whispered to himself. The bodyguard he’d encountered in the alley with the Breaker from outside the City. He whirled away from the lift gate and scanned the crowd. There. Bouchet was just setting down the barrel he’d been carrying. Without looking up, the big man hunched his shoulders and slouched toward an alley that ran between the railed-off cliff and the brick wall of a warehouse. Griff followed, dodging workers who were readying the next load for the lift. At the mouth of the alley, he peered around the corner just in time to see Bouchet slip through a door in the warehouse wall.

  After casting a keen glance behind him—no one, that he could see, was paying him any attention—Griff entered the alley, hurrying on quiet feet to the door. He put his ear against it. Muffled voices were talking; one sounded deep, like Bouchet. The conversation continued for a few minutes. Then there was the sound of receding footsteps and of another door closing. After a few moments of silence, Griff lifted the latch and opened the door to the warehouse. The room within was dark, but smelled of candle smoke. By the light of the open door, Griff could see that it was empty. Carefully he drew the patrol knife from its sheath at his back and stepped inside.

  The room was long and narrow; at its end, Griff found another door—this was where Bouchet, and presumably whoever he’d been talking to, had gone. He was about to open it when he heard, in the distance, the clang of the bell indicating that the lift was arriving back at the top of the cliff. He needed to catch it so he could rejoin Quirk and Rose.

  Quickly he opened the door to have a brief look. To his surprise, it opened onto a stairway that went down a few steps and then bent left. Toward the cliff. A secret way down to the lake, it looked like. This was how goods were being smuggled into the City, and how the young woman with the sword had gotten in, too.

  He shook his head, frustrated. He didn’t have time to investigate it now. Sheathing the knife again, he made his way back to the alley, then ran to the lift gate. Quirk and Rose were standing to the side while workers unloaded the lift; catching sight of him, Quirk frowned.